Four For Friday: The Do’s and Don’ts of People Analytics

Michael Altiero September 2, 2016

What’s the deal with People Analytics? This is a common question among HR and business leaders these days. While many experts have given reasons why every organization should be using them, there is still a lot of confusion about this new HR area.

This week’s Four for Friday is all about people analytics. From how to start your program, to where to get your data, and how methodology can impact your strategy. Check out these four articles and let us know what you think by tweeting to us @RecruitDDR!

“In recent months I was part of quite a few projects to start organizations off with people analytics. Several of them chose to begin their analytical journey with a needs analysis to see what their brand new people analytics department would be able to do for their HR stakeholders. I had warned them this wasn’t the right way to go about things,” says Luk Smeyers, Co-Founder at iNostix by Deloitte.

Big data has been a popular topic in HR for some time now. However, there is still a lot of confusion around this growing trend, especially when it comes to subsets of big data – like people analytics. This post on the Gotham Culture blog explores how to better approach the massive amounts of data that go into people analytics and how your team can really put it to good use.

“Traditional HR metrics include things like employee engagement, retention levels, exit interview results, compensation metrics, and the like. However moving forward, the team at US Bancorp is actually moving their analytics team out of HR into a broader overall strategy team which is where the customer analytics team also sits,” says author Jacob Morgan. Learn why in this podcast on the Inc. BrandView blog.

Tracey Smith, a top Global Influencer in HR analytics, provides a list of 13 ideas to help get you started with people analytics. “However, please remember that the key to success in analytics is to focus on and prioritize business questions of value to your company or organization,” says Tracey. Here are a couple of the 13 ideas:

Determine your best performing recruitment channels.

Assess turnover, where it’s highest and whether it’s good or bad

Predict future workforce needs

Assess the impact of training spend

Identify characteristics of top performers

Check out Tracy’s post to learn about each of the 13 ideas and how you can use them to get started with people analytics.